MovieChat Forums > Heart of Darkness (1994) Discussion > good actors, good director, good story -...

good actors, good director, good story - bad movie

posted 13 years ago by henrimaine
2 replies | jump to latest

It's hard to understand what went wrong with this movie. Nicholas Roeg is one of the most original directors of the last decades. John Malkovich seems perfectly suited to play a mysterious evil bad guy. Tim Roth is also good. And the story would allow tension, horror, characters, human psyche, nature's beauty and all such stuff.
So why is the result so meager? Is it because it's just a TV movie? Or is it because Apocalypse Now set the standard too high? Or was Roeg, perhaps, trying to be too "original" in his directing?

[–] MrBullo 10 years ago

Any movie that is compared against the superlative "Apocalypse Now" (IMDB vote of 10/10 from me) will always lose out.

Therefore, "Apocalypse Now" just set the standard too high. Although, I must add that I thought that Conrad's novel, although setting an ominous tone and having its moments, is somewhat over-rated. "Apocalypse Now" improved upon Conrad's novel by adding the Vietnam war context ...... the horror..

[–] Edward_de_Vere 10 years ago

Therefore, "Apocalypse Now" just set the standard too high. Although, I must add that I thought that Conrad's novel, although setting an ominous tone and having its moments, is somewhat over-rated. "Apocalypse Now" improved upon Conrad's novel by adding the Vietnam war context ...... the horror..

I agree that any film adaptation of Heart of Darkness will suffer from comparison to Apocalypse Now, so I made a conscious effort not to do so. Even then, this film somehow failed to deliver. As the OP said, given its director, cast, and setting, it should have been a much more atmospheric and gripping film.

I have to disagree with you about Conrad's novella being overrated, though I will concede that it's far from his best work. I'd rank Lord Jim and Under Western Eyes as Conrad's best, with Nostromo, The Secret Agent, and Victory not far behind.